International Journal of Language Testing
Volume:3 Issue: 2, Oct 2013

The present study attempted to explore the effect of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and motivation on Iranian test takers’ performance on multiple choice (MC) and constructed response (CR) tests of reading comprehension. Three hundred and sixty six students completed a cognitive and metacognitive strategy use questionnaire and a motivation questionnaire along with a MC and a CR form of a reading comprehension test. Independent-samples t-test showed that test takers’ performance differed significantly on MC and CR forms of the reading comprehension test. The effect of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and motivation on test takers’ performance on MC and CR test was measured using structural equation modeling (SEM). It was found that cognitive strategy use had a significant direct effect on MC and CR but metacognitive strategy use had a significant indirect effect on MC and CR. The results also showed that motivation affected MC and CR both directly and indirectly. Another finding of the study was that performance on MC and CR tests of reading comprehension was equally affected by motivation and cognitive strategy use.

Dynamic Assessment, with its roots in Vygotsky’s theory of mind, takes the integration of assessment and instruction much further by enabling the teachers to promote learners’ abilities by continually adjusting their mediation to the learners’ changing needs (Poehner, 2008). This study was aimed at exploring the feasibility of development and implementation of dynamic assessment procedure in the areas of EFL reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness of reading strategy. In particular, the effectiveness of dynamic assessment compared with static assessment of readingabilities of Iranian EFL learners was investigated. In order to respond to the research questions of the study, a quasi-experimental research was conducted. The procedure included a pre-test, mediated learning phase, and a post-test. It was applied with 47 intermediate participants. They were allfemale, mostly aged 15-17, Iranians, L1 speakers of Persian, and high school students learning English in an EFL context. The instruments employed in this study included a PET proficiency test, metacognitive awareness of reading questionnaire, and a reading comprehension test. A statistically significant effect was found for the performance of the participants in the experimental group who had received mediation. The findings also revealed that the students’ gain scores in the experimental group were significantly higher than the students’ gain scores in the control group who underwent the static tests. The findings suggest that DA is an effective means of understanding the learners’ abilities and helping them to overcome reading comprehension problems. The approach is especially relevant to classrooms as a method for rendering formative assessment practices more systematically. It is therefore argued that DA should be taken seriously by Applied Linguistic researchers interested in language assessment, teaching, and reading.